Book Review: The Pledge

TITLE: The Pledge
Book 1 in The Pledge series
AUTHOR: Kimberly Derting
PUBLISHED: 2011
CATEGORY: YA
GENRE: Dystopian
PREMISE: In the future your place in society is decided by what language you speak. For a girl with a gift of understanding every language, this is a dangerous world.
MY REVIEW: I was excited when I heard Derting was going to be doing a dystopian. I liked The Body Finder series well enough but never really fell in love with it because I felt like Derting was holding back at times. I was hoping maybe a dystopian would strech her creativity a bit further and maybe suit her writing more.
But my feelings on The Pledge are the same ones I have with the Body Finder series: creative idea that gets caught up in YA tropes and flat writing. I mean I loved the idea going on here. It was different in a shiny new way that enthralled me for the first half of the book. But like The Body Finder the author fell into tropes such as the instant romance trap, the telling and not showing trap, and of course there's the whole hidden ruler trope which has been done so many times I've lost count. So once again we have a great idea going on but it didn't live up to its full potential and that makes me a little disappointed.
But it's certainly an interesting idea for series. Like The Body Finder it's good enough that I'll be checking out the sequels. I just wish Derting would work on her writing skill a wee bit more to do away with the telling and not showing because I feel like it's holding her back from going from decent to really awesome.
WHO SHOULD READ: Body Finder series fans, dystopian fans
MY RATING: Three and a half out of Five merchants